Edward Ryan Jr., lawyer for woman in child death case, sued by Worcester

Wednesday

Feb 27, 2013 at 6:00 AMFeb 27, 2013 at 3:17 PM

The lawyer for a woman suing the city alleging a host of civil rights has himself become a defendant in the civil case he filed. In answering the lawsuit brought late last year by Nga Truong, who was charged by Worcester Police with killing her infant son four years ago based on what was later ruled to be a coerced confession, city lawyers have hit back with a third-party complaint against her lawyer, Edward P. Ryan Jr.

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The lawyer for a woman suing the city alleging a host of civil rights violations has, in an unusual legal turn of events, himself become a defendant in the civil case he filed.

In answering the lawsuit brought late last year by Nga Truong, who was charged by Worcester Police with killing her infant son four years ago based on what was later ruled to be a coerced confession, city lawyers have hit back with a third-party complaint against her lawyer, Edward P. Ryan Jr.

The city's complaint in federal court claims that if Ms. Truong is entitled to damages for the nearly three years she spent in jail awaiting trial, then Mr. Ryan is as much to blame as the city because he took too long to get the coerced confession tossed out of court by the judge.

“Ryan's breach of his duty was a direct and proximate cause of plaintiff's alleged injuries and damages,” according to the city's claim.

Mr. Ryan, who practices in Fitchburg, declined to comment publicly on the city's complaint against him.

But one of his fellow lawyers in Ms. Truong's civil case dismissed the city's third-party complaint as absurd.

“Worcester Police coerced a confession from a 16-year-old girl who would have spent the rest of her life in jail for a crime she didn't commit, and the city wants to shift the blame to Ed Ryan?” said Brookline lawyer John Reinstein, who called it an “astonishing” move by the city.

“If you were facing a first-degree murder charge, would you want it rushed?” he asked. “If it was so obvious the confession should be suppressed, why did the city continue to push the case?”

In the complaint against Mr. Ryan, city lawyers note that he was almost immediately critical of the police questioning of Ms. Truong without a parent present and raised issues about the validity of her supposed confession in the media soon after her arraignment in December 2008.

Mr. Ryan eventually filed a motion to suppress the confession on Nov. 1, 2010, almost two years after his client was arraigned on the murder charge for allegedly smothering her 13-month-old son, Khyle Truong, who died Nov. 30, 2008.

City Solicitor David M. Moore said in an email response to questions from the Telegram & Gazette that Ms. Truong is attempting to hold the city responsible for the time she spent in jail while awaiting trial.

“Her lawyer allowed almost two years to pass before he made a motion to get her released by suppressing her confession. While there are numerous defenses in this case, our position on this point is that, if the city is somehow found liable for the excessive incarceration, then the lawyer who represented her also bears liability for her time in jail,” Mr. Moore said.

Legal observer David E. Frank, a lawyer and managing editor of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, called the city's effort to include the lawyer who got her released from prison in any damages resulting from her confinement an unusual one.

Mr. Frank noted that Mr. Ryan likely had to watch the video tapes of his client's questioning many times, carefully review recent Supreme Judicial Court cases involving confessions and collect testimony from expert witnesses before filing a motion to suppress.

“Is the city saying that the lawyer should have just whipped something together and filed it quickly in a case where a 16-year-old girl was looking at life in prison? That argument seems like a stretch to me,” Mr. Frank said. “The stakes couldn't have been higher.”

Once the motion was filed, Superior Court Justice Janet Kenton-Walker ruled that the confession was not given voluntarily. The charges against Ms. Truong were dropped by District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.'s office for lack of sufficient other evidence. Ms. Truong, now 21, was released from jail in August 2011.

She alleges in her lawsuit in U.S. District Court that she was the victim of malicious prosecution, false arrest, false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The defendants in her civil suit are the city, City Manager Michael V. O'Brien, Police Chief Gary J. Gemme and Sgt. Kevin Pageau and Detective John Doherty, the officers who questioned her.

Portions of the two-hour interrogation of Ms. Truong were broadcast last year by WBUR, a National Public Radio affiliate in Boston, and the station posted several video clips of the police questioning on its website.

Chief Gemme said at the time the lawsuit was filed that Sgt. Pageau and Detective Doherty did not coerce the confession and that their work on the case was validated by Mr. Early's decision to prosecute Ms. Truong based largely on the confession.